Owners Of Hue Stretching Limits Of Hosiery Marketing

November 10, 1991|By Cara Appelbaum, Adweek`s Marketing Week.

Kathy Moskal and Sandy Chilewich met nearly 15 years ago at a co-op meeting in New York City. The two artists struck up a conversation about clothes and wound up discussing the latest fad in footwear, black canvas Chinese slippers. Both women liked the shoes but wished they came in other colors. So they got together to develop a new kind of canvas.

``We bleached out the black in my shoes and dyed them a beautiful royal blue,`` says Chilewich.

Soon Moskal and Chilewich were running to New York`s Chinatown to buy canvas shoes in bulk. Their colorful re-creations appeared in such stores as Henri Bendel and Macy`s, as well as in the pages of Vogue. Within two years their company, Hue, had stepped out of slippers and into fashion legwear. And in little more than a decade, it has revolutionized a category as lifeless and limited as hosiery.

With its rainbow of colors, patterns and textures, Hue has restructured the casual hosiery section of department stores. The company has nearly doubled its sales in each of the last four years and is expected to have revenue of $40 million this year. But Moskal, the company`s chairman, and Chilewich, its president, maintain that fashion trends have shaped Hue`s success, not the other way around.

``Now that women are wearing shorter skirts, they are paying much more attention to their legs,`` says Moskal. ``An opaque tight gives an outfit a much more finished look than regular sheer hosiery. And legwear is a very inexpensive way to update an outfit. You can get the look of current fashion without investing hundreds of dollars in a new suit or dress.``

Department stores project that sales of tights and opaque hosiery, 10 percent of the market, will jump 85 percent in 1991. The trend has attracted designers from Donna Karan to Anne Klein.

``Hue basically used to have the category to itself, but the competition has intensified,`` says Frank Oswald, communications manager for the apparel unit of Du Pont Co. The Wilmington, Del., company manufactures Lycra, which makes tights and leggings stretchy.

``Hue can`t stop now,`` he says. ``It has to be even more innovative. Especially since the tights market can`t continue to grow like this forever.`` Moskal and Chilewich are well aware of the dangers of losing momentum and are stretching the limits of hosiery marketing as fast and far as they can. With nearly 60 styles in 30 colors, Hue continues to expand into new categories. In the spring it launched a line for young girls, and this fall it has been rolling out a control line. The company has introduced items not usually found in hosiery departments, including leggings, bodysuits and bicycle shorts.